Journal of American Science 2012;8(11)
http://www.jofamericanscience.org
Evaluation of the velvet revolutions in terms of being a revolution or not (Analysis of the velvet revolutions in
comparison to the classical revolutions)
Morteza Ashrafi,
PHD student in political science, Tajikistan Academy of Sciences, Tajikistan. [email protected]
Abstract: If some common ideas about why the revolutions and also the velvet revolutions occur are taken into
account, basic issues making a theory of revolution will be revealed. It can be said that the revolutions, whether
classical revolutions or the velvet ones, are occurred due to economic crisis and poor conditions of people's
livelihood, when governments are faced with an uncontrollable volume of problem, or when a foreign government is
going to create crisis and foreclose the independence of local government. However, according to the material in this
paper, although the velvet revolutions have some of the outward signs of common revolutions of the modern world,
these movements cannot be named as "Revolution" because their internal features are completely different from the
big revolutions of the world and everything else we know as a revolution.
[Morteza Ashrafi. Evaluation of the velvet revolutions in terms of being a revolution or not (Analysis of the
velvet revolutions in comparison to the classical revolutions). J Am Sci 2012;8(11):250-252]. (ISSN: 1545-1003).
http://www.jofamericanscience.org. 33
Keywords: Revolution; The velvet revolution; Classical revolution; Power transfer; Political sciences
foreign policy of every country. This close relationship
not only indicates the effect of domestic conditions on
the type of adopted foreign policy of each country but
also contains a new definition of international
credibility of the government's foreign policy (Spasić,
Ivana, and Milan Subotić, (2001). With the onset of
power transfer and transition between national and
international actors, world's great powers are forced to
kneel in front of regional actors, very important actors
will enter into the Africa-Asia orbit, Atlantic powers
lose their positions or have to regulate their policies in
accordance with the priorities of regional powers, and
the history will be changed. The most severe collapse,
the worst power transfer, and the quickest power
change took place after the World War II. So, in
addition to its own mechanisms, power transfer also
has some roots including influence of values on
behavioral decisions and the behaviors of authoritarian
political leaders.
1. Introduction
1.1. Power transfer:
Power transfer consists of two parts including
transfer in power of business and transfer in political
power. Three components of power including force,
money, and knowledge have a significant role in
economic
and
political
life
of
humans
(SCHUMPETER, Joseph A. (1962). In past ages,
money and force were the main means to get access to
power, but now, given the diversity of political
structures and strong political relations between
governments, other means and factors such as
adherence to international political policies
(International law is also derived from this factor),
political legitimacy of governments in their own
countries, foreign intervention in the internal affairs of
other countries, and so on are important in power
transfer and it is the concept of transfer that includes
the developments of the contemporary world.
1.2. Transfer in political power:
Several theories have been proposed about the
government. The theory of Rostow indicates that
government has risen from within the hunter cultures
that had a chief or leader and also a strong and strict
organization for prosecuting and war. Witfogel and
Engels have also proposed other theories in this regard.
In any regime, whether democratic or non-democratic,
there should be congruence between the means of
producing wealth and government practices. If there is
a significant difference between political systems and
economic systems, one of them will gradually destroy
another.
1.3. Mechanisms of power transfer:
Mechanisms of power transfer in the world
require a close relationship between domestic and
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Figure 1: Different types of power transfer
250
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1.4. Types of power transfer (regime change):
Different types of power transfer are
classified according to three criteria including the
procedure of developments that may be peaceful or
violent, the origin of developments that may be from
top (within the government) from down (groups that
are not in power), and the depth and scope of changes
that may covers a range of changes from the most
superficial changes in government practices, people in
power, and governmental policies to the most profound
changes in the constitution, ideology of the ruling
class, and economic system.
Table1: regime change
Soft forms
Reforms
Social movement
The Color and Velvet Revolution
Soft war
Hard forms
Coup
Riot
Revolution
Military invasion
Civil war
2. Revolution:
Revolution is one of the derivatives of the
word "Heart" and heart means to change, put off, and
so on. The concept of revolution, in its first political
application, implied a cycle change for the restoration
of an appropriate political order, meaning governments
turning to each other. Revolution can have political,
social, or cultural features. Our purpose in this
definition is a political revolution. Political revolution
is a widespread popular revolt and illegal actions by
resorting to force. Revolution is a fundamental change
especially in the political system that challenges the
elites of government. Hence, revolution is a complex
and multidimensional concept that can be defined
according to its process, objective (Samuel
Huntington), and outcomes (Polity IV. 2010).
In order to achieve a more accurate
understanding of the revolution and its differences with
other social changes, all dimensions and features of
this phenomenon should be studied. Some of the
features of revolutions are as follows:
1- Fighting in revolutions is violent and more or less
long.
2- Much of the population effectively participates in
the revolution and mobilizing them needs some sort of
organization, leadership, and ideology.
3- Groups involved in the revolutionary struggle
mainly are not in power and can overthrow the ruling
power with the help of the people.
4- A revolutionary struggle occurs within an
independent political unit and the ruling regime loses
its power.
According to above-mentioned items, the main
components and features of a revolution include
popularity, being sudden and unexpected, being violent,
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251
changing the dominant values, and changing the ruling
political regime.
2.1. The velvet revolution:
Velvet Revolution, Color Revolution, Flower
Revolution, and Soft Subversion are new words in the
political literature which imply doing measures within
the law, without violence, and with foreign
intervention in order to change the ruling political
regime or administrative elites in a country.
2.2. Nature of the Velvet Revolution:
The study of different types of the color
revolutions indicates that such revolutions are started
on the basis of increasing public demands in the field
of civil and political rights. In other words, the
emergence of a gap between demand and existing
conditions, showing the inability of political regime to
meet the demands of citizenship and causing and
relative deprivation, will be followed by dissatisfaction
and unrest.
2.3. Now it can be evaluated that the velvet
revolutions are really revolution or not:
The velvet revolution is a series of political
developments
in
which
social
engineering
simultaneously begins with both media and public
opinion management and to reach a new political
engineering in within the new values and norms. The
velvet revolution has so far occurred in the remaining
countries of the East and West blocks and has replaced
the ruling regimes by the pro-West governments. Nongovernmental organizations, the press, websites,
political parties, student organizations, and guilds are
gotten involved in the velvet revolutions guided by
foreigners in order to provoke civil disobedience.
2.4. Color revolution and classical revolutions:
There are many differences between the velvet
revolution and classical revolutions and theories about
them. A lot of theories have been proposed by the
researchers and thinkers about the explanation and
analysis of revolutions. Since the eighteenth century,
especially after the French Revolution in 1789,
substantive definition and attitude to revolutions were
changed (SALNYKOVA, Anastasiya (2006). In fact,
the revolution lost its negative aspects including
intrigue, chaos, anarchy, and insecurity and in addition
to having a positive value, was proposed as an
idealistic model or template for the liberation of other
communities. For this reason, there is a difference
between many theorists who study the revolutions
about the nature of this phenomenon leading to
proposing various definitions of revolution and its
types and consequences. However, unlike these cases,
the term “Revolution” has mostly been used to
describe the sudden and radical changes in the political
and social circumstances (Svolik, Milan and Seden
Akcinaroglu. 2007). The velvet or the colors
revolutions depend on peaceful movements encourage
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political changes. The velvet revolutions mostly occur
during the election. In fact, election is a very important
opportunity for the velvet revolutions to occur.
Occurrence of the color revolutions is influenced by
the acting of a set of internal and external factors.
Negative publicity and magnification of internal
problems by external forces are two main examples of
these factors (LANE, David (2009). Another important
difference between the velvet revolutions and classical
one is that after the velvet revolutions, some changes
are made in laws through mechanisms such as election
or referenda. The level of violence is low in such
revolutions and former rulers usually are not killed. By
contrast, in classical revolutions like the Romanian
Revolution, revenges will begin after the victory of the
revolutionists and many people are executed and
massacred. It can also be mentioned that, unlike the
classical revolutions, the origins of the velvet
revolutions can be searched in geopolitical motives and
goals of Western countries and especially the U.S. In
order to take the important regions around Russia
under their control, the West needs to empower
Russia-phobic and West-oriented governments in this
region. In the conditions when there is no international
legitimacy, some measures such as coup and the color
revolutions could be appropriate solutions to empower
the West-oriented governments in the target countries.
3. Discussions:
By studying the color revolutions it can be
found that the color or the velvet revolutions are
wrongly classified as revolution, because we came into
the conclusion that classical revolutions and the color
revolutions have many differences. In order to prove
that the velvet revolutions are not real revolutions, it
should be said that although there is a dissatisfaction of
current situation in the velvet revolutions, their depth
and demographic and geographical breadth are not the
same as the classical revolutions. The role of
leadership and structures is less effective in the velvet
revolutions and it is the western media and institutions
and especially of the U.S. that encourage and mobilize
the people to protest. Such revolutions lack a deep
culture and originality. There is no expansion of the
revolutionary spirit and violence is applied by both
sides (protesters and regimes) at a very low level.
Movement of such revolutions is basically peaceful
and without violence. After the victory, just like some
kinds of political revolution, the ruling group and
foreign policy orientation are changed, but political
regime change or structural economic and cultural
changes as seen genuine social revolutions will not
occurred. Real revolutions are more a social
phenomenon rather than being a political event and are
rooted in the history and culture of a society, so that
they are irreversible. By contrast, the velvet
revolutions or "the velvet anarchism", in other words,
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are more a political phenomenon that are induced to a
society at a specific time through the media. Colonial
governments have a prominent role in the velvet
revolutions. These movements lack the required depth
of demands and are reversible. For instance, the issue
is still continuing in Georgia and Kyrgyzstan that have
undergone such revolutions. In other words, the velvet
revolution is not a real revolution but it is a kind of
anarchism. This means that it doesn't want to obey the
accepted laws and rules of society and thereby leads to
chaos and unrest. However, anarchism implies another
meaning in the political philosophy which is not
intended here, but anarchism in this paper means to
violate the rational, secular, and religious rules that its
result is chaos. Hence, instead of "the velvet
revolution", the term "the velvet anarchism" should be
used, because revolution is a social movement that is
rooted in the depth of a society's history, not what that
is taught to the audience in civil disobedience training
courses. Unlike the velvet anarchism phenomenon that
done by the cesarean of foreign governments,
revolutions are natural phenomena that are born
endogenously. Revolutions are not made artificially so
that they have an end can be a director and guide
throughout the history of their societies and even in the
world.
Acknowledgements:
Author is grateful to the Tajikistan Academy of
Sciences for support to carry out this work.
Corresponding Author:
Morteza Ashrafi,
PHD student in political science, Tajikistan Academy
of Sciences. E-mail: [email protected]
References
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Political Phenomenon, JCSTP, 25:2-3, 113-35.
2. Polity IV. 2010. “Political Regime Characteristics
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3. SALNYKOVA, Anastasiya (2006). The Orange
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Philosophy and Sociology, Belgrade).
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